Tree model

, going back 4000 years. (The numbers represent proposed historical dates in the Common Era). In historical linguistics, the tree model (also Stammbaum, genetic, or cladistic model) is a model of the evolution of languages analogous to the concept of a family tree, particularly a phylogenetic tree in the biological evolution of species. As with species, each language is assumed to have evolved from a single parent or "mother" language, with languages that share a common ancestor belonging to the same language family. Popularized by the German linguist August Schleicher in 1853¹, the tree model has been a common method of describing genetic relationships between languages since the first attempts to do so. It is central to the field of comparative linguistics, which involves using evidence from known languages and observed rules of language feature evolution to identify and describe the hypothetical proto-languages ancestral to each language family, such as Proto-Indo-European and the Indo-European languages. However, this is largely a theoretical, qualitative pursuit, and linguists have always emphasized the inherent limitations of the tree model due to the large role played by horizontal transmission in language evolution, ranging from loanwords to creole languages that have multiple mother languages.…

, going back 4000 years. (The numbers represent proposed historical dates in the Common Era).]] In historical linguistics, the tree model (also Stammbaum, genetic, or cladistic model) is a model of the evolution of languages analogous to the concept of a family tree, particularly a phylogenetic tree in the biological evolution of species. As with species, each language is assumed to have evolved from a single parent or "mother" language, with languages that share a common ancestor belonging to the same language family. Popularized by the German linguist August Schleicher in 1853, the tree model has been a common method of describing genetic relationships between languages since the first attempts to do so. It is central to the field of comparative linguistics, which involves using evidence from known languages and observed rules of language feature evolution to identify and describe the hypothetical proto-languages ancestral to each language family, such as Proto-Indo-European and the Indo-European languages. However, this is largely a theoretical, qualitative pursuit, and linguists have always emphasized the inherent limitations of the tree model due to the large role played by horizontal transmission in language evolution, ranging from loanwords to creole languages that have multiple mother languages. The wave model was developed in 1872 by Schleicher's student Johannes Schmidt as an alternative to the tree model that incorporates horizontal transmission. The tree model also has the same limitations as biological taxonomy with respect to the species problem of quantizing a continuous phenomenon that includes exceptions like ring species in biology and dialect continua in language. The concept of a linkage was developed in response and refers to a group of languages that evolved from a dialect continuum rather than from linguistically isolated child languages of a single language. ===Indo-European model=== On February 2, 1786, Sir William Jones delivered his Third Anniversary Discourse to the Asiatic Society as its president on the topic of the Hindus. In it he applied the logic of the tree model to three languages, Greek, Latin and Sanskrit, but for the first time in history on purely linguistic grounds, noting "a stronger affinity, both in the roots of the verbs and in the forms of grammar, than could possibly have been produced by accident; ...." He went on to postulate that they sprang from "some common source, which, perhaps, no longer exists." To them he added Gothic, Celtic and Persian as "to the same family." Jones did not name his "common source" nor develop the idea further, but it was taken up by the linguists of the times. In the (London) Quarterly Review of late 1813–1814, Thomas Young published a review of Johann Christoph Adelung's Mithridates, oder allgemeine Sprachenkunde ("Mithridates, or a General History of Languages"), Volume I of which had come out in 1806¹, and Volumes II and III, , continued by Johann Severin Vater. Adelung's work described some 500 "languages and dialects" and hypothesized a universal descent from the language of paradise, located in Kashmir central to the total range of the 500. Young begins by pointing out Adelung's indebtedness to Conrad Gesner's Mithridates, de Differentiis Linguarum of 1555 and other subsequent catalogues of languages and Young undertakes to present Adelung's classification. The monosyllabic type is most ancient and primitive, spoken in Asia, to the east of Eden, in the direction of Adam's exit from Eden. Then follows Jones' group, still without a name, but attributed to Jones: "Another ancient and extensive class of languages united by a greater number of resemblances than can well be altogether accidental." For this class he offers a name, "Indoeuropean," the first known linguistic use of the word, but not its first known use. The British East India Company was using "Indo-European commerce" to mean the trade of commodities between India and Europe. All the evidence Young cites for the ancestral group are the most similar words: mother, father, etc. Adelung's additional classes were the Tataric (which would later be known as the disputed family Altaic), the African and the American, which depend on geography and a presumed descent from Eden. Young does not share Adelung's enthusiasm for the language of paradise, and brands it as mainly speculative. Young's designation, successful in English, was only one of several candidates proposed between 1810 and 1867: indo-germanique (Conrad Malte-Brun, 1810), japetisk (Rasmus Christian Rask, 1815), Indo-Germanisch (Julius Klaproth, 1823), indisch-teutsch (F. Schmitthenner, 1826), sanskritisch (Wilhelm von Humboldt, 1827), indokeltisch (A. F. Pott, 1840), arioeuropeo (Graziadio Isaia Ascoli, 1854), Aryan (Max Müller, 1861) and aryaque (H. Chavée, 1867). These men were all polyglots and prodigies in languages. (Klaproth, for example, the author of the successful German-language candidate, Indo-Germanisch, who criticised Jones for his uncritical method, knew Chinese, Japanese, Tibetan and a number of other languages with their scripts.) The concept of a Biblical Ursprache appealed to their imagination. As hope of finding it gradually died they fell back on the growing concept of common Indo-European spoken by nomadic tribes on the plains of Eurasia, and although they made a good case that this language can be deduced by the methods of comparative linguistics, in fact that is not how they obtained it. It was the one case in which their efforts to find the Ursprache succeeded. ===Neogrammarian model=== The model is due in its most strict formulation to the Neogrammarians. The model relies on earlier conceptions of William Jones, Franz Bopp and August Schleicher by adding the exceptionlessness of the sound laws and the regularity of the process. The linguist perhaps most responsible for establishing the link to Darwinism was August Schleicher. That he was comparing his Stammbaum, or family tree of languages, to Darwin's presentation of evolution shortly after that presentation, is proved by the open letter he wrote in 1863 to Ernst Haeckel, published posthumously, however. In 1869, Haeckel had suggested he read Origin of Species. After reading it Schleicher wrote Die Darwinische Theorie und die Sprachwissenschaft, "Darwinism tested by the Science of Language." In a scenario reminiscent of that between Darwin and Wallace over the discovery of evolution (both discovered it independently), Schleicher endorsed Darwin's presentation, but criticised it for not inserting any species. He then presented a Stammbaum of languages, which, however, was not the first he had published. The evolution of languages was not the source of Darwin's theory of evolution. He had based that on variation of species, such as he had observed in finches in the Galapagos Islands, who had appeared to be modifications of a common ancestor. Selection of domestic species to produce a new variety also played a role in his conclusions. The first edition of Origin of Species in 1859 discusses the language tree as though de novo under the topic of classification. Darwin criticises the synchronic method devised by Linnaeus, suggesting that it be replaced by a "natural arrangement" based on evolution. He says: "It may be worth while to illustrate this view of classification, by taking the case of languages. If we possessed a perfect pedigree of mankind, a genealogical arrangement of the races of man would afford the best classification of the various languages now spoken throughout the world; and if all extinct languages, and all intermediate and slowly changing dialects, had to be included, such an arrangement would, I think, be the only possible one. Yet it might be that some very ancient language had altered little, and had given rise to few new languages, whilst others (owing to the spreading and subsequent isolation and states of civilisation of the several races, descended from a common race) had altered much, and had given rise to many new languages and dialects. The various degrees of difference in the languages from the same stock, would have to be expressed by groups subordinate to groups; but the proper or even only possible arrangement would still be genealogical; and this would be strictly natural, as it would connect together all languages, extinct and modern, by the closest affinities, and would give the filiation and origin of each tongue." Schleicher had never heard of Darwin before Haeckel brought him to Schleicher's attention. He had published his own work on the Stammbaum in an article of 1853, six years before the first edition of Origin of Species in 1859. The concept of descent of languages was by no means new. Thomas Jefferson, a devout linguist himself, had proposed that the continual necessity for neologisms implies that languages must "progress" or "advance." These ideas foreshadow evolution of either biological species or languages, but after the contact of Schleicher with Darwin's ideas, and perhaps Darwin's contact with the historical linguists, Evolution and language change were inextricably linked, and would become the basis for classification. Now, as then, the main problems would be to prove specific lines of descent, and to identify the branch points. == Notes==

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